1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a medium drive apparatus, an operation method for a medium drive apparatus, an information processing apparatus, a recording and reproduction accessing method for an information processing apparatus, a program and a program recording medium. The present invention can be applied to computer systems and so forth which use a medium drive apparatus such as a disk drive which performs recording and reproduction on and from a recording medium such as, for example, an optical disk.
2. Description of the Related Art
A system is known and disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,832,276 wherein an optical disk drive is connected to a personal computer such that the personal computer accesses an optical disk loaded in the optical disk drive.
Generally, in a computer system to which a medium drive apparatus is connected in this manner, software activated on the personal computer side makes it possible to execute a recording access and a reproduction access to an optical disk or a like disk loaded in the medium drive apparatus.
A system wherein a drive for a writable DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) is connected to a personal computer by a USB (Universal Serial Bus) or an ATA (Attachment) is taken as an example.
In the system described, the (software of) the personal computer side first acquires information of a medium loaded currently and a write characteristic which relies upon the medium and the drive. Then, writing software of the personal computer side can perform a recording access based on the acquired information to write information in a free format.